D is for Development

The term ‘development’ refers to the growth and changes that take place in children from before birth, throughout infancy and childhood until the onset of adolescence and becoming a young adult. Child development has a long and rich history as a complex and fascinating area of academic study, and includes the work of key psychologists and thinkers, such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Erikson and Donaldson.*

In the last post, I suggested the centrality of the child in creating optimal conditions for learning but did not mention the major developmental changes that take place in children throughout the pre-school and primary years. These include physical changes, the development of fine and gross motor skills, mother tongue language development, as well as psychological, social, emotional and intellectual development. For us as teachers, all these areas have a major influence and impact on how we organise our lessons, the kinds of activities we ask our children to do, and the learning outcomes that we can achieve. It therefore helps enormously to be aware of what we can broadly expect in developmental terms with our classes throughout the pre-school and primary years.

Generally, developmental processes have been related to age, although there needs to be a strong ‘health warning’ or proviso that development is a continuum rather than divisible into neat stages. There are also many completely normal differences in the rate of different aspects of development in individual children, depending on a range of factors, such as culture, environment, family and education.

By the time children come to our classes (assuming this is not before the age of 3), they have already arrived at some major developmental milestones, such as learning to walk and talk in their first language(s).  At the risk of over-simplification and over-generalisation, the following chart** notes examples of some other relevant developmental changes and differences that we need to take into account when teaching children of different ages.

 

Age	Physical and motor development	Social and emotional development	Intellectual development
3-5	can run, jump, kick and throw a ball; can control a pencil; can cut paper with chunky scissors; can draw round a template; has limited spatial orientation; cannot sit still for long. Later: can hop, skip, climb a slide, swing, steer a tricycle or bike; can follow a dotted line with a pencil; can reproduce letters and make shapes from plasticine; can copy writing; can draw people and shapes; can colour carefully; knows their way about the classroom.	strong attachment to parents/carers; keen to please; motor play and beginning of symbolic play; often has imaginary friends; shows signs of empathy and caring; may still have temper tantrums; egocentric and not always willing to share; needs constant approval and encouragement. Later: wants to be independent; beginning to have ‘best’ friends; developing a sense of humour; can be ‘bossy’ and argumentative; begins to play cooperatively; eager to learn and do ‘real’ work; strong sense of fantasy; perceives good and bad as absolutes; developing conscience.	has very short concentration span; can listen attentively when interested; can sort objects into simple categories; can focus on the ‘here and now’; limited memory strategies. Later: understands sequences; can recognise missing parts in a puzzle or picture; draws and paints with purpose; can recognise things that are the same or different; understands concept of relative size.
5-7	can manipulate a pen and write with increasing speed and ease; can cut following a line; can draw people and shapes with confidence; can copy with greater accuracy and in more detail; knows their way about the school and immediate environment; knows right hand from left hand. Later: continues to develop fine and gross motor skills in all areas.	shows concern for others; friendships with peers have increasing importance; plays and works cooperatively; has greater self-control; recognises the need to share and take turns; often needs constant approval; can be upset by setbacks. Later: has greater sense of responsibility; social acceptance by peers has increasing importance;  can understand consequences of actions and behaviour; can begin to formulate solutions to personal problems.	has good sense of past, present and future; grasp of logical problems intuitive at times; tendency to focus on one aspect of problems; can sort, classify and sequence things; understands numbers; can solve concrete problems; can do single, simple mathematical operations. Later: draws with detail; reads and writes independently;  developing use of memory strategies; can understand conservation of number; can begin to see things from another perspective.
7-9	increasing precision and confidence in fine and gross motor skills; enjoys learning new physical skills.   Later: continues to develop in all these areas.	can see things from others’ point of view; less dependent on parent / teacher for immediate nurturing although still needs to feel constant approval. Later: can organise and plan working and playing cooperatively; may feel more competitive with peers; can have frequent quarrels and ‘bust ups’ with friends; may only want to work with friends of the same gender.	has longer concentration span; can solve concrete problems related to immediate experience; can classify, order, sequence; can organise objects into a series; can understand conservation of mass, weight and volume; can predict, hypothesise, deduce within a clearly defined context; greater use of memory strategies; develops metacognition. Later: continues to develop in all these areas.
9-12	As above, and also developing particular skills e.g. sports, playing a musical instrument. Later: starts to undergo physical changes related to adolescence.	friends become increasingly important; more subject to peer pressure; less obvious reliance on teacher for approval; greater independence and self-control. Later:  can experience mood swings; may become more self-conscious or awkward; may have struggle with identity; evidence of more developed conscience; begins to develop ideals; selects role models.	can perform an increasing range of logical mental operations which are context-embedded and/or relate to immediate experience; can follow written instructions independently e.g. to make a model; develops awareness of genre and register. Later: greater capacity for work and study; begins to develop abstract concepts and reasoning; awareness of language as a system; begins to manipulate ideas in the mind; reason deductively; formulate and test hypotheses; continues to develop metacognition.

 

Are there any other factors you would suggest adding to the chart?

What are the implications of the chart for the way we teach different age groups?

Please do share your ideas!

* Two examples of readable and informative accounts of the history and theories of child development are:

Meadows S. The Child as Thinker Routledge Books

Smith P., Cowie H. & Blades M. Understanding Children’s Development, Blackwell Publishers

** I have created the chart from a range of sources, such as the above, and including aspects which also concur with my own real life experience as a teacher and parent.

Age

Physical and motor development

Social and emotional development

Intellectual development

Advertisement